Marching Into The Peace Corps, pt 22: Keeping the Plateau Monster In Check

It seems like I’ve been stuck in the same weight range much too long. This problem has been on my mind for a while and I’ve already seen it once in this weight loss game: the dreaded plateau monster is paying me another visit.

My diet is very tight and well controlled. I know the caloric counts of the food I’m eating, and I space the daily caloric intake between five meals. I am drinking 120 ounces of water each day and taking my vitamins and nutrient pills faithfully. Every day I engage in some activity or another; yesterday was almost a 2-mile walk and a one-hour workout that’s hard for me to keep up with. This morning as I stepped on the scale, I was hoping to see the numbers go down, but they didn’t budge one bit.

I’ve seen this before in my diet when I was hovering between 10-12 pounds lost. It would go up to 13, retreat down to 10, and go back up to 12. It couldn’t make up its mind, and my diet wasn’t changing. At that point I had been walking 5 miles a day, but then experienced the torn calf muscle that sidelined me for several days. When it healed, I began working out to some videos I had in my house as a way to help break the plateau, and it worked after a few days. The scale started to move and life was good again. About 10 pounds later, the needle on the scale is acting like someone’s holding it back with all their might. I’ve increased my workouts to push past it, but it won’t budge with conventional wisdom.

Although a plateau monster is disheartening on the minor end and a royal cheese off on the other, you can find something positive out of the experience if you stop and look at the situation for a moment. The scale may not move, however, that doesn’t tell you if your body’s burning fat and replacing it with lean muscle that weighs more. The more lean muscle you have, the more calories you are going to burn because muscle tissue requires a greater caloric load than fat hanging around your midsection. The other positive is you wouldn’t plateau if you hadn’t progressed to such a point – your body is simply informing you’re ready to take it to the next fitness level.

The bad news about plateaus is: they can be hard to break out of, and they can mentally wear you down. You start saying to yourself, “I’ll never break out of this rut!” and before too long, you give up.

So how can you keep the plateau monster from visiting you? There are many ways to do this, so experiment and use these tips to help you over the difficult hump period.

Dietary Suggestions:

1. Change your diet! Your body easily adapts to foods and can almost predict the caloric load, so shake it up and throw your system a curve ball. Have medium levels of protein and low “sticky” carbs for two days, then on the third day, spike your calories modestly with “sticky” carbs. It’s also a good idea to change your meal plan from time to time so your metabolism gets a “shock” from what it’s become adapted to processing. Introduce new foods and recipes and don’t be afraid to experiment in the kitchen!
2. It’s ok to throw your body a “cheat meal” once in awhile – just don’t go wild on it. If you eat a meal that contains 2000 calories, don’t expect to see the scale go down the next day. Keep within the foods your body best processes for energy, and then enjoy the meal!
3. Look closely at your diet for hidden “bad” fats, excessive sticky carbs, and salt. Some also claim caffeine is on this list of no-no foods, too, but the jury’s still out on that. Most people know to skip the latte’, but they don’t know to skip the diet colas that often have artificial sweeteners that can be toxic to your system. The job of the liver is to clean out the garbage and flush the stored fats out, but if you’re toxifying it with sweeteners that are reportedly linked to some cancers, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. In short, give your diet a once over with a fine-toothed comb. A food journal with everything you’ve eaten can help you find the culprit foods.
4. If you’re eating 3 meals a day, break them up into either five (women) or six (men) meals a day so your body gets a regular dose of energy, which also stops cravings in their tracks from taking hold of you!
5. Make sure you’re drinking plenty of water. Don’t include coffee, tea, or juices as part of your daily intake. Be careful of the juices – they are often highly concentrated sources of sugar and calories. Skip them and go for their counterpart and you’ll save a lot of calories.
6. Skip the alcohol at all costs! Some drinks can “cost” you several hundred calories. Let’s put that into perspective: according to some of the things I’ve read, pina coladas will set you back 400 calories, whereas I can have two Gorton’s salmon filets, two cups of California blend veggies, two cups of spinach, and still have 70 calories to spare. If the calories don’t scare you, knowing your body will use the alcohol for fuel instead of fat first should. Every alcoholic drink also creates a toxic soup for the liver to metabolize. This means the liver also stops working on your stored fat and works overtime to process the alcohol it sees as nothing short of a “poison”.
7. Increase your protein levels for a few days. Remember your high school biology class? “Protein is the building block of muscles.” I learned this lesson when I tore my calf muscle and had trouble with it healing. Once I increased my protein, it finally healed and hasn’t given me an ounce of trouble since.

Lifestyle Changes:

1. If you’re not taking vitamins, then maybe it’s time to add them to your diet. Skip the expensive formulas out there or anything that’s risky – you just want to give your system a little help, not induce an accidental stroke. Steer clear of all ephedra products (banned in 2004 by the FDA) and avoid doing the aspirin-caffeine stack many athletes use as it increases your heart rate.
2. Make sure you’re getting enough sleep. It’s hard to perform any workout if you’re tired. The body always needs plenty of rest because not only does it rejuvenate the mind, but also it repairs the body.

Exercise Routine Shakeups:

1. Change the way you exercise. If you perform the same exercises day in and day out, your muscles become so conditioned to the load it is no longer a challenge for them. This means they don’t help you burn as many calories! Shake it up! If all you do is free weights or bench pressing exercises, put the weights down for a week and shoot some hoops or jog. If you change the energy requirements by changing the muscle groups worked, you will break the plateau. The goal is to use a new set of muscles for awhile to help you get over the hump.
2. Take a couple of days off. By giving your body a short rest period, the muscle fibers you have broken down have time to heal and become stronger. This will help the muscles to perform at higher intensities in the future.
3. One day push it hard, next day take it a little easy. Mix up the intensity of the workouts you do on a daily basis. Increase your reps by a few more on different exercises each day just to keep your body guessing. You could also increase the weight you are pumping as well. The key is to throw your system off balance.
4. Some people swear by high intensity circuit training, which is short, fast bursts of energy with a high caloric burn factor as a way to break a pesky plateau. This may be too strenuous for a beginner, so if you have a personal trainer, you might want to ask them to tailor a solution that’s right for your body’s fitness level.
5. If you’re not using free weights or resistance bands, it’s time you add them to your workout! You can never go wrong with building a little extra lean muscle. Most people are not aware that as we age, we lose lean muscle tissue, and that causes our metabolisms to drastically slow down. Increase the lean muscle and watch your weight loss speed up!
6. Do you always perform your cardio routine first thing in the morning? Shift the time around! I perform multiple workouts and rarely do I do them at the same time every day because I don’t want my body to get used to certain things at certain hours – except when it comes to eating.

It’s wise to remember when you’re a beginner to change your exercise routine every month to avoid your body settling into a state of comfort. This may mean once or twice – depending on your intensity and goals. Once you graduate up to intermediate and advanced, you should change your routine approximately every two weeks because your muscles are trained and become accustomed very quickly.

You don’t have to use all suggestions; you can easily mix and match them to your individual needs, but it’s good to have several options to choose from when a problem arises. Good luck with caging your plateau monster!

If you don’t like trying to find all the segments of this series, you can locate the links to them here and they will return you the exact spot on the appropriate site.

quazen.com articles by this writer can be found here

socyberty.com articles can be located here

relijournal.com articles are here

picable.com photographic images are here